Bet less than the minimum

Many people want to try their hand at trading without risking large amounts of money. Knowing how to place a bet that is less than the minimum amount is useful to know and also explains how some of the software packages do it.

When this article was first published a few years ago, little did I know that it would be copied, plagiarised and generally stolen from this site and used by other websites. But after thinking about it for a while I realised that it is obviously something that people want to know. So I have re-written it here.

Placing a back bet at less than the minimum amount

At bettingtraders.com we would recommend starting off with minimum stakes when learning how to use the exchanges and learning how to trade. So backing at less that the minimum amount is a useful thing to know.

How does this work?Betfair operates all bets placed on the system to be put in a queue and matched on a FIFO (First In First Out) basis. For example, if you placed a bet for £10 at 14:01 then modified the bet to £20 five minutes later the amount will be seperated into another bet and the Betfair system will place the balance at the current time 14:05. The system will show not one bet at £20, but two. One for £10 placed at 14:01 and another for the same amount placed at 14:06. This is so you cannot jump the queue in order to get matched first. If bets were not put into a queuing system you would have chaos in each market as everybody tried to trump each other and get to the front of the queue. It is this system that allows us to bypass the minimum bet level.

Step one

The first thing to do is place a back bet at a price OUTSIDE of the current available price so that it will not get matched. Generally, we would choose 1000 but if your horse or team or whatever it is you wish to bet on is currently priced at 6.8 then you could use 7.2. Choosing a high price minimises the risk of getting this bet matched because at this stage we do not actually want to place a bet

From the image below you can see we have placed a bet of £2 at 1000. We have to do this first as this is the minimum amount.

{rokbox size=|750 169| title=|Place a bet AT the minimum :: But at a large price|}images/stories/articles/minibet/backingless1.jpg{/rokbox}
Click for a larger image. Note - if the price is ALREADY at 1000 then we cannot place a bet for less than the minimum as the initial £2 will get matched.

Step two

Go into the "My bets" section of the screen and modify you order for £2 + £amount you want. In this example you can see that we want to place a bet for 1p so I have modified the order value to £2.01 When you have done this submit this bet.

Step three

The new bet will enter the market. But not as one, but two bets. One bet for the original stake of £2 then another bet for 1p!

{rokbox size=|750 197| title=|Now we have TWO bets|}/images/stories/articles/minibet/backingless3.jpg{/rokbox}
Click for a larger image.

Step four

Now cancel your £2 at the large price of 1000

{rokbox size=|750 197| title=|Cancel the £2 bet|}/images/stories/articles/minibet/backingless4.jpg{/rokbox}
Click for a larger image. although we eventually placed a bet for £0.01 we actually needed £2.01 in our account as a minimum. If you have less than £2 + amount you wish to bet then this method will not work.